Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/iii/paper-69/7/a/solution

The orthogonal projection condition is for all . Since , it is equivalently
The mixed-normalization spline Gram matrix is invertible: , where and is the positive-definite ordinary Gram matrix of the basis. Nonnegativity and the unit-integral normalization of a B-spline give . The subpartition of unity for B-splines gives, on all of ,
Consequently
so
This is the maximum-norm bound for spline projection. Using a subpartition matters when the basic knot interval is a proper subinterval of . As in the paper's assertion that the image lies in , the spline space here must consist of continuous functions; order-one step splines or full-multiplicity interior knots do not have that property.

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